Well, folks, here’s the inevitable post where I explain how I wrote a really long post about the intersections between loss, nostalgia, and the printed book, but then… it accidentally got deleted, only to become unrecoverable to the sands of time. I just returned from the amazing “Living Room” hike, up the hill from the University of Utah where we saw a beautiful sunset and the incredible cityscape of Salt Lake City. Dusty and tired, I expected to roll online, share my wonderfully thoughtful nostalgia post on social media and climb into bed, but alas, our best laid plans go awry.
So, instead, this is a short meditation and a simple reminder: always back-up your content. Always double-check your Internet connections. Never draft directly in your blogger’s composing tool. All good reminders, of course. In my frustration, my mind has raced to things like, “This would have never happened if you had just put this in Google Docs first!” or “This would have never happened if you had written this in your notebook!” But our choices have affordances and limitations, risks and rewards. I often write directly in my WordPress blog as an attempt at time-saving and as a way to see my formatting before going live. But glitches happen, ideas lost, and moments in time forgotten. I’ll try to recover my trail of thought for tomorrow’s post, and perhaps I’ll even have something better to say then.
But until then, I’ll mourn the loss of my drifted thoughts and let myself breathe through the frustration. There’s nothing I hate more than losing a good idea, so I’m feeling particularly mad at myself. But there’s a moment here too that invites forgiveness. So, here I am, writing as a way to forgive myself, knowing that the sting of this will feel better with some rest under my belt and another new day of idea generation ahead.